The National Butterfly Center, located in Mission Texas is (was) the North American Butterfly Association’s (NABA) “flagship facility and a primary focus of its efforts aimed at educating the public about the value of biodiversity, the beauty of the natural world, the wonder of butterflies, particularly, and the powerful role they play in maintaining healthy ecosystems and sustainable food resources.”  The NABA was founded in 1993 to study and preserve the butterfly populations that migrate between North and South America, and hold butterfly counts and other conservation programs to protect these delicate creatures.

Why am I writing about a butterfly sanctuary?  Because it was forced to close indefinitely in late January after suffering years of harassment by QAnon followers and other rightwing nutjobs who believe that the sanctuary is not really a butterfly center, but actually a hub for child sex trafficking.  Remember PizzaGate where some idiot shot up a pizza shop believing bullshit that it was being used by cannibalistic Democrats led by Hillary Clinton for child sex trafficking? Well, the same thing has been going on now for 4 years at the butterfly center after rightwing grifter and pal of Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage, unleashed a barrage of false accusations in retaliation for the center filing suit to stop TFG’s construction of his border wall right through the sanctuary.  Kolfage, who, along with Bannon, is under federal indictment for fraud over their “We Build the Wall” project that duped a whole lot of gullible people out of about $20 million.  Kolfage is well known for releasing nonsense and wild conspiracy theories into the rightwing Noise Machine to attack his perceived enemies.  He’s been banned from social media for all kinds of things including spreading conspiracy theories and creating fake accounts, but his followers do most of his dirty work now for him.

One of those followers is a fringe candidate for Congress from Virginia, Kimberly Lowe, who is apparently so far out there that she was even uninvited to the anti-immigration “We Stand America” rally recently in South Texas, but she took the opportunity while there to “investigate illegal immigration and sex trafficking” at the butterfly center with her friend who was apparently posing as a Secret Service agent.  It went about as you’d expect, with a physical altercation between the center’s director, Marianna Treviño Wright, Lowe, and her friend.  Lowe had demanded to see where the “smuggling” was going on, and, well, you can guess the rest.  The center had planned to close for the duration of the rally, but is now closed indefinitely due to the danger posed to the center and its staff by nutjobs.

It’s easy to stand back and shake your head at the nonsense that proliferates on social media, but this stuff is so corrosive that it’s actually endangering lives and has poisoned all reason, threatening the very foundation of our system of government. It’s especially bad in Texas and other red states where this nonsense has infiltrated once mainstream conservatism and goofy conspiracy theories are now repeated by elected leaders.  Since the base is now crazy, and gerrymandering has cemented it in, I don’t see a path for a return to any kind of reason.